>I don’t really know how to sum up the Year in Music of 2009. If you went off the Billboard charts, this was a truly awful year for music. Formulaic, Generic, Dance hybrids with insanely annoying but catchy hooks were seemingly all you needed to hit #1 this year. On a good note, all the music released this year wasn’t awful. There were a few underrated gems, and a few deserved successes, so here is a quick recap of the best and worst of these past 12 months.

*Artist of the Year*

1. Michael Jackson

Typically, if an artist is able to move TWO MILLION units in one week, completely dominate the iTunes album singles and video charts, and open up a movie that grosses $200 million — they would undoubtedly become everyone’s Artist of the Year. Unfortunately it took Michael Jackson passing away for him to achieve all of this since June of this year. However A lot of the younger generation, who grew up around the time his star was being trampled on by the media, were able to appreciate his music really for the first time and sort of got to re-discover him as a new artist.

2. Beyonce
3. Lady GaGa

*Biggest Flop of the Year, or the Try again next time award*:
Awarded to the artist who this year had a less than successful run on the charts, but the talent and the drive is still there enough for us to not underestimate them in the long run. Even the greatest have flops, so chin up and come back harder next time. You can do it.

1. Ciara
2. Leona Lewis
3. Jordin Sparks

*New Artist of the Year*

1. Lady GaGa

Lady GaGa might officially have been the new artist of last year since her debut “The Fame” was released in October 2008. However, 2009 is when Lady GaGa pretty much conquered the world and made a name for herself. Though the material on her album might not be the most inventive, she more than made up for that with some truly amazing performances. She did the New Artist thing right, she made sure she made headlines with her outlandish fashions. She had people talking about her before they even saw her perform, and that’s when she always managed to live up to the hype and deliver pretty flawless, and surprisingly strong singing and always some sort of arty-gimmick to keep viewers eyes on her at all times. She ended the year releasing a strong set of dance songs on an EP called “The Fame Monster” that showed some growth. A very strong year for GaGa, let’s see where she goes from here.

2. Drake
3. Kid Cudi

*Guilty Pleasure of the Year*:
Those songs that you KNOW are terrible from the first time you hear them, but for some reason — most likely due to radio saturation — you can’t escape the song and before you know it, you’re humming the melodies uncontrollably and sooner or later that awful song you made fun of at first is on your iPod and inching closer and closer to your Most Played.

1. The Ricky Bobby, “Do the Ricky Bobby” by B-Hamp
2. The Stanky Legg, “Stanky Legg” by GS Boyz
3. The Jerk, “You’re a Jerk” by New Boyz

*Best Comeback of the Year*

1. Britney Spears

Britney takes this crown, because her comeback was more true to what the term was originally intended to mean. She really made a true return to form. True, a return to form means more lips-ynching and mediocre dancing while being sexy. That’s what has gotten her this far, and it’s not hard to do. However anybody who has a TV, a computer, a radio, or access to any tabloid magazine knows that Britney’s chaotic story in 2007 after her divorce. She tried to, or more like Forced by her label, save her image with the album “Blackout” which was a surprisingly hot album. The problem was that she was completely whacked out, either psychologically and physically drained or on drugs and was obviously just not into it. With her late 2008 release “Circus” and it’s video she’s great, looking fresh and toned, attacking the (again mediocre) choreography, but the best was that she seemed “Present”. The album was actually above par, and very late in her US tour she delivered some knock out performances (of course still lip-synching). I don’t think she has much longer before time catches up with her body forever, and apparently she’s ready to release another album in 2010 and keep the streak going.

2. Kelly Clarkson

Kelly didn’t have any apparent drug or psychological problems to comeback from, but she did have a very nasty and public dispute with her label and label head Clive Davis over her last album “My December”. That album tanked, and Kelly was seriously in a critical situation with her career. She came back this year though, and with a huge record breaking #1 “My Life Would Suck Without You”. Her album sold decently, but another hurdle of massive weight gain (maybe that’s a little mean, I should say rapid weight gain) almost stopped her career dead in it’s tracks. However the Ryan Tedder production “Already Gone”, that she openly did not want as a single, is still doing really well on the singles charts and at the end of the year she’s garnered a Grammy nomination.

3. Whitney Houston

It seems like people have already forgot about Whitney’s big comeback, almost 6 years in the making. Grammy voters sure did. About 6 months ago, everybody was predicting Whitney would have one of the strongest comebacks in music history, and was sure to grab multiple music trophies just for coming back strong. The main problem was that she didn’t comeback strong, even though her “people” did a fantastic job of trying to fool everyone. Her album “I Look to You” was passable, if a little boring and ultimately forgettable. Her live performances were another story, though her voice has come along way since her last comeback in 2002, she literally can’t hold a note. And no amount of backup singers or extremely loud backing vocal tracks can hide it. That, and the Oprah interview that really didn’t show her in a flattering light. Though her album did sell pretty well, there are seemingly no plans for any follow up singles or anything else. This might be a wrap for Whitney.

*Artist that most needs to just Give it up this Year*: The greats are great forever, unless they don’t realize that they’re not the #1 stars they used to be and keep releasing material in hopes of dominating the music world, when in reality their mainstream relevance has been gone. These three artists still seem to think they can regain (and in one case achieve) Popular success, and they seriously need a wake up call before it’s too late.

1. Janet Jackson

Janet seems to be very likable in the mainstream, but the problem is nobody is buying her albums. 2008’s “Discipline” completely flopped, and the album before that “20 Y.O.” didn’t fair any better. She hasn’t had a #1 single since 2001’s “All For You”, and hasn’t managed even a Top 10 single since the second single from that album was released. And here she is in 2009, getting major sympathy points from the death of her brother. Has a highly publicized network television interview where they debut her new video “Make Me”, yet the song has made ZERO dents in the chart. Just give it up Janet. “Why Did I Get Married Too” is set to be released in early 2010, and that might just be her new medium to attack, Acting. I think it’s time to step away from the studio because, hell she doesn’t even have a contract right now.

2. Mario

Mario has never been The One! He’s never had any real stretch of time as the reigning R&B singer. When he first came out, he was basically the younger Usher with braids. He had a hit, but this was during one of Usher’s several dominant periods of R&B. When Mario’s second album was released, he managed to score a big hit out of “Let Me Love You”, but somehow that songs writer Ne-Yo ended up eclipsing him. 2007’s “Go!” was a great album for Mario, but than he had both Ne-Yo and pre-battery charge Chris Brown owning him on the charts. And now, when he probably thought it was safe to release his 4th album “D.N.A.”, Trey Songz is completely owning him as the new young R&B Heartthrob. So, Mario, Sorry! Your time has passed. Give it up.

3. Jennifer Lopez

Honestly. Even though you’re “Louboutins” single is actually kind of cute and catchy, people stopped caring about you years ago. Focus on acting (re-train yourself, take some classes) and please stay out the studio.

MTV got back to when the VMA’s were actually good. They had a killer roster of performers who turned in some really great highlights. Taylor Swift performing in a subway, GaGa dying, Pink singing while doing acrobatics from the ceiling, JayZ and Alicia getting ambushed by Lil mama, and Beyonce’s hundreds upon millions dancers. And, back to form, the VMA’s delivered a water cooler topic in Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech to declare “Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time”. Staged? Well, I have my theories, but the important thing is it was a great moment that will stand against the other great moments of the VMA’s.

*Most Unnecessary Collaboration of the Year*

1. Wale and Lady GaGa “Chillin”

There’s actually nothing wrong with the song, but it was so obviously intended for M.I.A. and not Lady GaGa (who actually does make the song). I guess it was a smart decision since GaGa was so hot at the moment, but the collaboration doesn’t make sense given how both artists are from completely different worlds in genre, fan base and personality.

2. 50 Cent and NeYo “Baby By Me”

I just hate this song so much, and really upset that after releasing an album titled “Year of the Gentleman” NeYo would participate in a song with such a vile message.

3. Shakira and Lil Wayne “Give it up to Me”

Good song, but Lil Wayne really wasn’t needed and he contributes nothing. It almost sounds like one of those mixtape mash ups of one of his mix tape verses. This is the song where I, personally, officially got tired of the Weezy verse.

*Best Impersonation of another Artistof the Year*

1. Lady Gaga as Madonna on “The Fame Monster”

Bravo! GaGa has been getting Madonna comparisons since “Poker Face”, but never has she got the essence of Madonna until her “The Fame Monster” EP was released. “Alejandro” plays like a soft mash of “Cherish” and “La Isla Bonita”. And when she gets to name calling famous screen sirens and art Icons on “Dance in the Dark” (“Marilyn, Judy, Sylvia” “Liberace” “Kubrick”) it becomes obvious that the mockery is intended. (?) Never the less, she did a great job.

2. Chester French as Weezer on “Love the Future”

If you imagine that Weezer recorded an album produced by the Neptunes in 2002, it would sound pretty much exactly like Chester French’s debut “Love the Future”. Except that it would have been 10 times better.

It’s not even that this kid managed to get past security and actually get face to face with Britney and dance with her that’s funny. It’s Britney’s reaction, and how long it takes her to get back to dancing and lip-synching.

*Most needed STFU of the Year*: Alot of artists are best when they aren’t speaking (ahem, Beyonce), and these are the three artists this year that should have refrained from any interviews because it did them more damage than good.

1. Chris Brown

Doing one Larry King Interview was fine. Even though it came nearly 7 months After the well-known “Incident” in February involving Brown and than-girlfriend Rihanna (we all know the story). The interview is understandable, just to clear the air and protect his image. Unfortunately, Brown sounded pretty damn moronic during the interview. He was totally evasive about the incident itself, and sounded like he was recycling the same 5 “I was wrong! Please forgive me” sound-bites he had most likely been rehearsing for weeks. Bad interview, but it gets worst. After Rihanna did a much more respectable and revealing interview with Dianne Sawyer, Chris Brown did yet ANOTHER interview where again he revealed nothing and again was playing himself as the victim. Please Chris Brown! STFU!!! Both of you should have just let it go, nobody really cared 7 months after the fact, but Chris made it worst for himself by talking too damn much.

2. Tiffany Evans

Her tweets about Rihanna and the devils in the music industry wasn’t necessary. And when Rihanna calls her out for it, Evans tweets “at least I can sing”. Yeah, you do have a good set of pipes, but the problem is nobody wants to hear you sing. Most people don’t even know you. Rihanna is worldwide. Don’t be mad? Get some people behind you that will make things happen for you. And it doesn’t have to be the devil. While your assembling that team… STFU!!

3. Keri Hilson(tie)Whitney HoustonKeri, and not just because she dissed Beyonce in a remix to her “Turnin me On” single (“yo vision cloudy if you think that you the best, she can sing, she can dance, but need to move to the left. she need to go have some babies, she need to sit down, she fading.”), its really the fact that she went on radio and said A) she didn’t want to record it B) she said it wasn’t about anybody in particular. STFU!!Whitney, because on Oprah she said plenty of times she didn’t smoke crack. Oprah: “so you laced marijuana with cocaine” Whitney: “Yes Rock Cocaine”. colossal FAIL!!! Whitney STFU!!

From *Hottest to Weakest Producer of the Year*

1. Ryan Tedder. This guy started out the year in high demand. He had monster success in 2008 with Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love”, and coming into 2009 he had the epic “Halo” by Beyonce. Shortly after that, it seems he had peaked. Kelly Clarkson famously called Tedder out for giving her almost an exact replica of “Halo” in her own “Already Gone”. By the time the end of the year rolled around and I’m sure he was expecting to repeat the success of “Bleeding Love” with Leona’s “Happy”, but being that it sounded just the same as pretty much all his other tracks it tanked on the charts and effectively ended his reign as the “IT” Producer of the moment.

*Leaked (!?) Nude Pics of the Year*:

1. Rihanna

Just when things couldn’t get worst. She just got beat up by her boyfriend, terrorized by the paparazzi and tabloids, and lost a cosmetics contract. Than some very sexy nude pics, obviously taken with and by than boyfriend Chris Brown. Though many question the pics that show her frontal view, most people were on Rihanna overload at that point so nobody really cared much and they were soon forgotten.

2. Jamie Foxx

The funny thing when male celebrities pictures leak, they always have to come up with a statement about it. Either declaring they are fake and that they’d never do anything like that, or admit that the pictures are them, but try to spin it so they don’t seem like a big pervert. Jamie Foxx didn’t do any of that. He or his team just made sure they were removed before it got to millions of viewers, which is something that surprisingly alot of those other guys don’t make the effort to do.

3. Cassie

For the amount of times nude pictures have leaked of a celebrity, Cassie gets the crown this year. Although she’s not much of a celebrity.

I’m like, really behind as you can tell. The BET Awards were on Sunday and it’s now Tuesday morning. Not only haven’t I blogged about the awards yet, but I have some work to do because I need to post a Classic Album Review for Michael Jackson, there are a few new albums I need to review and I have to give you the new set of 6 Artists on my Top 25 All Time Artists list. And I want to have it all done by Thursday night (when I leave for Atlanta for the weekend).

So here we go.

The BET Awards 09 was the first televised award ceremony since the unexpected death of Michael Jackson. And although I feel like it’s more than appropriate for BET to celebrate him, being that a good 90% of the artists in the building owe so much to Jackson and the fact that BET have been long time supporters of all the Jacksons even when the other video networks betrayed him. And I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, they had less than three days to re-arrange the format of the show to make it a fitting and respectful tribute to the Legend.

For the most part, they did a great job. Jamie Foxx was the host and he did a pretty excellent job, his opening monologue included a hilariously funny attempt at Moonwalking and throughout the show he celebrated his love for Jackson and reminded the audience why he was so important.

There were a few performances of Jackson’s hits by current artists. Ciara performed “Heal the World”, Jamie Foxx and Ne-Yo dueted at the end on “I’ll Be There”, but Ne-Yo provided the best performance (imo) with “Lady in my Life”. Ne-Yo connected with the song on an emotional level, and his vocals were the best I ever heard them. Aside from those handful of performances, and testimonies from stars in the audience on how Michael influenced them, there wasn’t much else as far as a tribute to MJ. Michael’s sister Janet Jacksoncame out to a standing ovation toward the end to speak for the family and thank the fans for their support.

The rest of the show was pretty typical Award show stuff.

I’m pretty sure Beyoncé won the most with two awards, Ne-Yo won, Weezy won, T.I. and Rihanna won, Lebron James won, Taraji P. Henson won. But this was not an awards show where awards were actually important. In fact, because of the last minute changes the awards alot of the categories were combined and the nominations weren’t announced. Just the winners.

Performance wise, it was pretty boring to tell you the truth.

Jamie Foxx did a terribly auto-tuned live rendition of his monster hit “Blame It”. It’s sad when T-Pain outsings you live, and you have no sense of stage presence or choreography. His performance was a bit of a mess, but still fun enough to appropriatley get the crowd on their feet.

Keri Hilson performed an uptempo medley of her two hits “Turnin Me On” and “Knock You Down” (without Ne-Yo or Kanye). She tried. She really tried. However seems like she missed a few rehearsals, or she was just super nervous. She looked awkward trying to sing live and do the little bit of choreography she was expected to do, though she still wasn’t terrible. She pulled it together enough for me not to laugh at her.

Soulja BoyTell Em (like is that his full name? I thought it was just Soulja Boy) got the crowd all singing along to his hit(?) “Turn my Swag On”, which I hadn’t heard before and is actually a pretty catchy tune. He, like most rappers, didn’t do much performance wise. Just kind of walked back and forth on the stage. It was the crowd that made his performance a winner with Taraji, Keri and Lebron dancing and singing along.

Jay-Z introduced his new single “D.O.A. Death of Auto-Tune” to a live audience and pretty much slayed it. You could tell our boy Jigga was more than happy to be back on stage. Meanwhile his wife slowed it down (and put a bunch to sleep, I have to be honest) with her beautiful rendition of “Ave Maria” where she incorporated Sarah McLachlan‘s “Angel” and went opera on us with the original Spanish version of “Maria”. She sounded amazing, but I think everybody was expecting Sasha Fierce to come out.

Speaking of sounding Excellent, Keyshia Cole sang her duet with Monica “Trust”. They both looked great, and Keyshia made a vast improvement over her mess of a performance last year. However Monica stole ALL Ms. Cole’s shine. She sounded excellent, and like Jigga, was so excited to be back on stage. She’d be smart to release an album real soon.

Maxwell came out and performed his new single “Pretty Wings”, a beautiful song sung beautifully but just like Beyoncé Keyshia and Monica, great vocals don’t always make for the most memorable performances.

Drake and Lil Wayne‘s performance was memorable for the wrong reasons. First of all Drake was sitting down the whole time. It wasn’t until the after show that I realized he was injured and couldn’t move around. So he gets a pass, although I didn’t understand why he didn’t Sing the sung parts of his hit “Best I Ever Had”, but whatever. The most bothersome thing about the perfomance is when Lil Wayne came out with his crew to perform “We Like Her”. With all the terribly disgusting and vile comments they made within the song about Women and Sex I was really bothered with the fact they brought out about 5 or 6 under age girls (like 10-12) to stand around and dance to the song. What was he thinking?

Ofcourse there was the annual tribute, this time to The O’Jays. I can’t for the life of me figure out why they’d pull Tevin Campbell out to perform for them, but they did. Than Trey Songz, Tyrese and Johnny Gill came and sang a trio of the O’Jays hits as “The Young O’Jays”. They sounded good, but I have to say Trey Songz impressed me the most. He has great vocal talent. With the right material he’d be bigger than Chris Brown without a doubt.

I can’t think of anything else to say about the show. Masterfully MC’d by Jamie Foxx, and pretty solid performances. I think overall I may just be getting bored of Award shows. However this was a good effort overall for the network. And I think they succeeded in giving Michael a great tribute.

>So I don’t feel like I can start a blog, and not do a quick recap of the 2009 releases. Because for one a lot of them I may be mentioning in future blogs because they are that good… and also because there haven’t been many noteworthy releases this year. (Actually, you should keep in mind i haven’t had internet at the house for that long now… I probably do need to catch up.)

so i guess i’ll just get started.

The R&B Releases:

The first album that was released this year that i was really excited about was The-Dream’s sophomore album “Love vs Money”. And it’s still my favourite of the year. Much like his debut “Love(Me all summer)/Hate(Me all winter)” was last year. This sophomore album isn’t drastically different from the first, but he actually manages to make it work. Much like Jagged Edge or T.I. or even Mariah Carey, he seems to follow the same winning format and it Wins again. Basically because he makes a slight improvement over the last album, “Mr. Yeah” becomes the 2009 version of his first hit “Shawty is the Shit”, The title track (both Parts 1 & 2) become the sequel to “Nikki”, “Walking on the Moon” completely laps “Fast Car” as the Prince inspired club single from this album. There are a few spots where he goes in a totally new direction however, mainly the two song Opus in the middle of the album “Fancy” and “Right Side of my Brain”. The former being a very ambient track that turns into (at the very end) a Hip Hop Bass Banger that leads seamlessly into the very out there “Brain” which has one of the most addictive hooks on the album. The albums first single “Rockin that Shit” seems a little familiar to his most popular (and most borrowed from — see Jamie Foxx “Blame It”) single “I Luv Your Girl”, but the barely there hook also reminds you of the aforementioned “Shawty is the Shit” so combined they sound fresh. Same with “Kelly’s 12 Play” which takes the best of his “baby-makers” on his last album and blends it with lyrics pretty much everybody of our generation can understand, trying to find that perfect Soundtrack for the bedroom (and I don’t really agree, but ALOT of people will vouch that R. Kelly‘s “12 Play” is That album). In conclusion =P this is a very solid album. All of the songs may not be 5 star rated, but played all together this album will definitely see life throughout the year.

It’s become pretty obvious that since Rihanna’s “Umbrella” exploded in 2007, The-Dream and producer Tricky Stewart (writer and producer of the #1 smash) have been a ubiquitous feature on several of the R&B and Pop albums released since. And that’s going into this new year as well, and their three productions on Ciara‘s third album “Fantasy Ride” (released Tuesday May 5th) mark some of the highlights on a very surprisingly good outing from Miss Ci-Ci. Though The-Dream does have a killer single with Mariah Carey on his own album (that albums second single “My Love“), he may have an even better duet with Ciara on her albums “Lovers Thing” which is a perfect mesh of the 80’s R&B and Today’s repetitive, “Eh Eh” influenced R&B. Even better still is another 80’s inspired slow jam “Keep Dancing on Me”. And our own “Radio Killa” also had a hand in producing Ciara and Ludacris‘ re-pairing “High Price” a very addictive and Hard urban cut. Those are undoubtedly a few of the highlights of “Fantasy Ride” , however Ciara also works well with some different sounds namely the Dance music genre. In what should have been the albums first single, Ciara duets with the now infamous Chris Brown on what couldn’t be described as anything other than a BANGER “Turntables” which is an undeniable dance cut that I hope we get a video for at some point. Rodney Jerkins contributes the superior “Pucker Up” (maybe my favorite song on the album) with great results. Unfortunately, this album is more of a Producers album than it is Ciara’s album. On her previous outing “The Evolution”, Ciara managed to let her voice and her style shine through the upbeat dance tracks. This album she is a little buried under the production. And another thing that’s a bit unfortunate is the fact that her label picked two of the most boring songs off the album (the Young Jeezy featured “Never Ever” and the Timberlake assisted “Love Sex Magic”) and chose to release them as the first and second singles, which might have the majority of people uninterested in what might be the best R&B/Dance album to be released this year.

Now almost the complete opposite is Keri Hilson, a new artist that actually released a bunch of great singles, making alot of people interested in her debut album “In A Perfect World” which ended up being very lackluster. Now it’s no secret that the music industry basically falls in the hands of the Star Writers and Producers of today. An artist alone seemingly can’t get people to buy an album (unless your T.I., Beyonce or Lil Wayne), but who produced it and who is featured on an album seems to be more important. Given that fact, Keri should have had an amazing album. She’s been working her way up in the industry since at least 2006 when she was featured on at least 4 of the tracks from Diddy‘s “Press Play” album. She was featured on a bunch of tracks on Timbaland‘s “Shock Value” including the #1 Hit “The Way I Are“. She has been featured on loads of rappers albums (Nas, Lloyd Banks, Rich Boy), and she was prominently featured in Usher‘s #1 hit video “Love in this Club”. She should have had the pick of the litter to come with a memorable debut. Even on the albums intro track she name drops Super producers Polow Da Don and Timbaland, and we know she works very closely with Danja. So why does her album suck?
A simple answer would be: she’s nothing special. Polow, Timbaland, Danja and even Akon breathe life into alot of the tracks and about half of the album is very good, but most of those standout tracks feature someone else or the track drowns her completely out. Standouts on this album are “Turnin Me On” (great Polow Production, Killer Weezy verse), “Knock You Down” (featuring both Ne-Yo and Kanye), “Return the Favour” (with Timbaland), “Get Your Money Up” (featuring Keyshia Cole and Trina), and “Change Me” (a duet with Akon). While the low points seem to all come from when she is by herself. Though “Energy” (one of the many false-start singles released in 2008) is an amazing song and “How Does it Feel” doesn’t completely suck, pretty much every other song suffers from sounding too much like every other R&B song out there, and she sounds like every other R&B artist. It seems Keri, and this album, is like one of those big blockbuster Summer movies. Where you spend so much on visual effects so you know that’s going to sell the movie, but don’t bother to spend time on a good script or actors. Keri knew she had the best of the best for production, but it seems like she didn’t take the time to make Herself (her voice and personality) more of a standout.

While we’re on disappointing R&B releases, let’s talk about Day26. These “Making the Band” Characters finally released their sophomore album “Forever in a Day” after what might be their best season on the hit MTV reality show. Now this album may not be terrible, it’s far from their self titled debut which had them basically taking the place of 112 and Jagged Edge with nice harmonies and upbeat love songs. This album sounds more like just a R&B radio hodge podge. None of it is terrible, but none of it is really good enough to remember. It’s really not even good enough to devote space on my blog to, so i’ll just leave it at that. Just stick with the singles and the tracks you heard them record on the show(“Stadium Music” “Imma Put it On Her” “So Good”), and than pray that we get a DVD of their most heated season.

The Pop Releases:

There has been alot of predictable and forgettable releases on the Pop side as well. Chris Cornell, of Soundgarden and Audioslave fame, released his third solo album this year. The album “Scream” is a collaboration with my favourite “Used to be Good” Producer Timbaland. Don’t get me wrong, Timbaland is a talented individual but in the past 4 years he hasn’t contributed anything that would be mistaken for innovative or original. And unfortunately this album doesn’t change that. While listening to the album, which is also not terrible, I got the feeling I was listening to retreads of his productions for Bjork, Duran Duran and Madonna. Additionally Chris’ voice seems to not really fit the darker-dance tracks Timbaland provides on this album. They both do their best to make it work though, and that’s fairly evident which is why this album isn’t a totally stinker. In fact, it’s really not bad and it might grow on me. Parts of it are really fun. Some parts just seem a little odd.

Kelly Clarkson, America’s first “Idol”, comes back on the Rock-Light scene with her fourth album “All I Ever Wanted”, which in my opinion, is the most paint-by-numbers Pop album released so far this year. Being that her last album “My December” flopped, it seems like her label was taking no chances. They wanted to construct the perfect Pop/Rock album with all the usual players. For instance, Katy Perry and Max Martin. Katy owned this Rock-Light/Pop market last year with a trio of hit singles produced by Martin… and just when she was fading off Pink delivered a smash hit with her Martin produced “So What”. So of course Clarkson has Martin producing her first single “My Life would suck with You”, and actually taking two unreleased Katy Perry songs for her own (the second single “I Do Not Hook Up” and “Long Shot”). Clarkson also works with Ryan Tedder, who produced and wrote Leona Lewis‘ Monster single “Bleeding Love”, as well as his own “Apologize” with his group OneRepublic. They actually collaborate on most of the albums stand outs “Impossible” and “Save You”. The rest of the album is made up of many lackluster, same sounding songs. The real (and really the Only) standout here is the uptempo Rocker “If I Can’t Have You” which basically shits on the rest of the album. “Cry” is also a nice change within the album because it sounds more country than anything else. (I want to add, Kelly’s big hit singles from 2005 “Since u been gone” and “Behind these Hazel Eyes” were also produced by Max Martin, and actually gave him a bit of a comeback. I just didn’t want it to seem like I was saying Kelly stole Max Martin from anybody.)

Moving on to something new and surprising let’s talk about Chester French. This duo made one of their first appearances on Common‘s “Universal Mind Control” album on one of it’s best songs. And shortly after released a mixtape with Clinton Sparks on their website. All to help build up for their debut release “Love the Future”. Now on the mixtape (“Jacques Jams Vol. 1”) Sparks actually describes them as The Beatles meets Outkast, but don’t get too excited they really aren’t That good. They ARE good though, I’d say it’s more of a mash up between Weezer, N.E.R.D., Beck and maybe a small slice of the Beatles. Their sound is really cool though, they are on the StarTrak label which isn’t very surprising. Though the duo (Maxwell Drummey and D.A. Wallach) produced the entire album on their own, they obviously have a big influence in their label heads Pharrell and Chad. In fact, this album does what those guys were never able to do. Chester French made a better N.E.R.D. album than N.E.R.D. did. In the end it’s a really Fun, catchy, experimental Rock/Hip Hop album that works surprisingly well. “C’Mon (On My Own)” “The Jimmy Choos” “Bebe Buell” are the more upbeat, radio friendly singles while “Not over You” “She Loves Everybody” “Beneath the Veil” and “Sleep” are some excellent tracks that really show their Neptunes influence. And as good as “Love the Future” is, I happen to feel like their mixtape “Jacques Jams, Vol. 1: Endurance” is even better. It actually uses the late 90’s Hip Hop technique of weaving a storyline with the interludes which begin with “Starting a Band” to “Realizing Being a Nerd is Cool” to “Becoming a Douchebag” to “Regaining Your Hard On”, and the interludes are hilarious. This mixtape is also filled with great featured guests from Kardinall Offishall & N.O.R.E. (“No Parents Allowed”), Lady Gaga, Pharrell, Jermaine Dupri, Talib Kweli, Solange Knowles, Diddy, and Jadakiss. But the best two songs come from a collaboration with Janelle Monae titled “Nerd Girl” and the sequel “I’m Sorry“, where he tells his “Nerd Girl” he’s “Sorry” because he got too famous for her. Get into Chester French, I don’t predict that they’ll have any monster singles from “Love the Future” but who knows, they have potential.

Now Last, but definitely not least is my favourite artist Prince. Who released his Target-only “LOtUSFLOW3R” album which is three discs. However you’re only going to need one of those discs. The first disc is actually not even Prince but his “protegee” Brea Valentina (titled “Elixer”). And, yeah I haven’t listened to that. The second disc, “LOtUSFLOW3R”, sounds like Prince trying to time travel into the mid-60’s Psychedelic era and definitely serving up his own Jimi Hendrix style guitar playing. Not a terrible album, well yeah it is. There are only about 3 songs that save this portion of the set. However once you pop in the third disc “MPLSoUND” , listening to the other two will all be worth it. This album is PRINCE, good 1982 sounding Prince. At just 9 tracks, this is a great Prince album. You got some great slow burners like “Ur Gonna C Me” and “Here”, while you get some really hot uptempo club hits (the best he’s done in decades… seriously) in the albums Highlights “Chocolate Box” and “Valentina”. Two songs that could easily get him back onto Mainstream Pop radio (“Chocolate Box” with a verse from Q-Tip, actually gives the best Black Eyed Peasradio hit a run for it’s money). I haven’t really expected much from Prince since the 90’s, and he’s released some fair albums over the years. This one (well “MPLSoUND”) shocked the hell out of me, because I never thought Prince could get back to the greatness of the “1999” Era. He obviously does not surpass that classic album, but he gets as close as he’s been in a very long time.